Now, now, nothing? Hardly.
IMO, thread drift is generally a very good thing. The alternative is strict and doctrinaire moderation, which was the detestible policy at Chowhound.
All of us, to a real extent, are “wasting” our time here. Coloring outside the lines sometimes is one of the joys of Hungry Onion.
If you were to post your own OT here and felt I had hijacked it with idle eggplant patter, I’dve desisted. But it was my OT, so what do you really think of… nah.
well, if you read through all of the posts, you’ll notice that i’m not the only poster who has an issue with protracted posts that have nothing to do with the initial topic.
I agree with you. When this site opened after the close of Chowhound I was excited to have another place to learn and share. Then it was pretty much only chit chat, which users seemed to enjoy. I come back from time to time but find the topics of interest to me are not well-covered.
The NYC board is often the same group of 8 using the site to plan IRL events. Other areas just seem to be people complaining (e.g. this very thread). I get it that this is what they enjoy. It is just not for me.
Come with, why don’t you.
Thank you for the invitation. Opportunity cost, I guess. So many great places in the NYC area, so little time!
THAT is true. There aren’t many restaurants I go to more than once, in the grand scheme of things. New ones keep opening. And I’m not done with the old ones!
A “problem” many of us would like to have, for sure.
Yes, of course. I’m lucky in that we get to be “regulars” at the restaurants we go to when we’re upstate, 'cause there aren’t all that many of them. So it’s the best of both worlds.
You see the irony here, yes? Isn’t kvetching about thread drift also distractingly OT?
Well of course. You are never alone on Hungry Onion, even if you like eggplant and shrimp on…
…waffles?
I just ran into another annoying restaurant feature: Christmas music. Luckily, I was just picking up some takeout.
OMG it’s f’n errrrrrrrywherrrrrrreeeeeeeee. Makes me wish I could wear ear buds 
ETA: I’ve actually (and thankfully) not encountered it in restaurants. Yet.
I have a friend who was visiting family in China in December a few years back. She was amazed at the amount of Christmas music everywhere (including restaurants). It was apparently a recent phenomenon (not like that when she and her husband had left) but their young son thought it was great.
I don’t maintain contact with my family anymore so Christmases are hard. Listening to Christmas music everywhere doesn’t help. I know I’m not the only one who spends Christmases alone so there are probably a few of us out there that share the same sentiment. Heck even when I was still in contact with my family I still couldn’t stand it. And not everyone celebrates Christmas so I wish they’d tone it down abit.
I’m so sorry to hear that 
Do you get together with friends over the holidays?
The dinner club I’m in has dinner in a fancy restaurant on Christmas day so I go to that. They are a really nice group and I’ve been meeting up with them for so long they are like family. The daytime is hard though.
I have a friend a two hour drive away that spends Christmas with her aunt and uncle since they live nearby. She usually takes her boyfriend of the month to join them so I’ve given up waiting for an invitation. The last two boyfriends had drug and alcohol addictions and the aunt told her last year she is no longer allowed bringing boyfriends home.
I have another friend that lives down the street but the only thing she’s concerned about is hoping her family remembers to get her the right gifts. I don’t know how I attract these people…
“Copain du jour”, like that one!
You just happen to live an interesting life.
Interesting. I’ve never heard that. I think b/c in the U.S. we use the term “Native American” now.
That’s good to hear. For many of us, our friends are our chosen family (or at least part of what we consider our family) whether our relatives are still alive or not. With both of our parents gone now - my mom just died this summer - and siblings far away and/or preoccupied with their own families & children’s families, it’s been our MO for many years to hang with our closest circle.
Absolutely zero drama, which is a 180 from what I grew up with and dealt with well into adulthood. No pressure to gift anything (we do a silly joke gift exchange sometimes), just sharing good food, drinks & each other’s company. Yay for friends…OR great family relations IF one has them.
Well, there’s always the four incarnations of Adam Sandler’s Chanukah Song for variety’s sake - except I’ve never heard it played in a restaurant or a mall. I don’t think Gen Zers would even get any of the references to people in the first version -it’d be like a history quiz.
